Countless Meetings in the Mundane World

Somehow Lan Wangji had failed to anticipate Wei Ying’s… imagination. 

Certainly Lan Wangji imagined Wei Ying and himself engaging in plenty of activities.  Or, rarely activities, more frequently he would see Wei Ying rub his face lazily against the bed sheets in the morning, and imagine Wei Ying on the same bed, panting, straining, reaching for something Lan Wangji denied him.  He would catch a glimpse of Wei Ying’s wrist, the bone that protruded at the hinge, and imagine his fingers around it, Wei Ying’s wrist trapped, pulling.  Sometimes Wei Ying’s laughing mouth made him think of reaching out, and placing his thumb on Wei Ying’s lower lip and gently but firmly pulling that mouth open.  

Sometimes, to be fair, Wei Ying was doing nothing in particular, Lan Wangji could be alone with his guqin and he would imagine the flush spreading down Wei Ying’s neck, down his back, while Lan Wangji teased him and bit at his thighs.

And Wei Ying was not unappreciative when Lan Wangji pursued these visions, when the moment seemed appropriate.  Lan Wangji knew that his own thoughts were not always the kinds of thoughts other people had but he was certain that Wei Ying imagined similar things, because Wei Ying told him.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, casually resting his forearm on Lan Wangji’s shoulder and swaying in toward Lan Wangji, perhaps somewhat informal given they were standing out on the street, but still proper. “The wind blew your hair away from your neck and I wanted to bite you, right here,” he murmured, tapping a knuckle against the join of Lan Wangji’s neck and shoulder.  “Right in front of the children and mules!  When did I become so scandalous?”

“Wei Ying has always been scandalous,” Lan Wangji told him, since that was true.

“True,” Wei Ying admitted. “And I can’t start chewing on you in public, who knows what sort of rumours that will start?”

The rumors that would be started by that seemed obvious, and furthermore, not untrue, so Lan Wangji lifted an eyebrow.

“No, you know—” Wei Ying bobbed his head oddly and then moved his arm jerkily, and Lan Wangji realized he was mimicking the stiff movements of a fierce corpse.

“Do not,” Lan Wangji said, as evenly as he could, since he knew Wei Ying did not mean anything particular by it, and was only teasing.

Wei Ying said, “Sorry, sorry,” and scraped his nail against Lan Wangji’s neck to make up for it.  

---

Wei Ying, however, seemed to also enjoy wild flights of fancy.  They were traveling afoot, or rather, Lan Wangji afoot, Wei Ying astride the donkey, leaving a village where there had not been a Yao, but rather a rat infestation, which Lan Wangji had found somewhat disquieting, not to say revolting, and Wei Ying had found hilarious.  The sky was blue and they were traveling at a leisurely pace, Gusu Lan having accepted that when Hanguang-Jun and Wei Wuxian went out together to investigate these cases their return would not be prompt and it was to the general advantage to make no inquiries on the subject.  Wei Ying said, punctuating a long period of quiet, “But what if you were taking me somewhere?”

Lan Wangji did not feel this merited stopping, Apple being somewhat easier to move once she began than she was to start, but he looked at Wei Ying over his shoulder.

“What if I was your captive, and you were going to sell me?” asked Wei Ying, sounding not at all upset about this possibility.

Lan Wangji stopped, without making a decision.  “I would not,” he told Wei Ying.  He was unable to imagine letting Wei Ying out of his grasp.  Wei Ying his captive, that sounded… well, of course he had held Wei Ying captive when he was pretending to be Mo Xuanyu, so it was even a thing that had happened, but the prospect of handing over Wei Ying to someone else, some unknown person, some person of low moral character who would participate in such a thing, was unacceptable.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying protested, drawing out his name.  “Of course I would want to convince you to keep me!”

“Yes?” asked Lan Wangji, since this sounded more to his liking, watching Wei Ying now.  Apple had already got herself well into a patch of nettles and would be a struggle to extract, but Lan Wangji ignored the creature for now.  Wei Ying looked at Lan Wangji from under his eyelashes.

“Of course.  I’ve got to persuade you, somehow.  I’d do anything,” he sighed, in that flirting way of his where the flirtation was a joke he was sharing with Lan Wangji, but a joke he was always prepared to make serious.

Lan Wangji looked around for a location that seemed promising, and also free of nettles.  When he looked back, Wei Ying was looking at him expectantly and he realized he was supposed to play his role as well.  “Come persuade me, then,” he said, and Wei Ying did not seem disappointed.

---

Lan Wangji frequently enjoyed Wei Ying’s stories, although he did not think he enjoyed them in quite the spirit Wei Ying did.  Rather, Wei Ying’s fertile mind was always pleasing to him, even when he did not know all the fruits that grew there.

When the elderly inn-keeper insisted on giving them two rooms, in recognition of their importance, Lan Wangji merely bowed his head and accepted rather than attempt to decline.  Wei Ying met his gaze and he understood that Wei Ying would join him once the inn went to sleep, although they had had to wait for servants finishing their nightly duties to clear the halls.  

When it was finally silent outside, Wei Ying snuck into his room, giggling quietly. “Lan Zhan!” he whispered, fumbling toward him in the dim light.  “I feel like a wife sneaking out to meet her lover!”

“Mmm,” said Lan Wangji, grasping him by the arms before he tumbled over the bed.  

“My husband doesn’t satisfy me,” Wei Ying said mournfully, before kissing Lan Wangji on the chin, and then, having oriented himself, the mouth.  “He’s too old.”

“And lazy?” suggested Lan Wangji, trying to imagine the husband capable of neglecting Wei Ying.

“Yes,” said Wei Ying.  “Or, no— He’s— he doesn’t know how to satisfy a woman, because he’s a cutsleeve.  He spends all his time with his lover, leaving me alone.” He leaned heavily on Lan Wangji, who, disoriented, allowed himself to be pushed down on the bed.

Lan Wangji felt like he had missed a stair.  He knew that Wei Ying was well aware that he himself was a cutsleeve with no particular ability nor inclination to satisfy a woman.

“His lover,” said Lan Wangji.

“Yes,” said Wei Ying, climbing atop Lan Wangji and finding the opening of his robes by feel.  “They’re childhood friends, and they grew up together, but I know the truth.  Every moment they can they’re sneaking off together.  My husband’s hands are up his friend’s robes, and his poor wife is alone in bed.”  Wei Ying rubbed against Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji kept petting Wei Ying, trying to buy time.  He knew he was supposed to be someone in this scenario, but he felt much more attuned to the husband than to the story Wei Ying was trying to spin.

“Poor wife,” he echoed somewhat weakly.

“Yes,” said Wei Ying, dramatically, and then, after a pause, noticing Lan Wangji’s distraction, “poor Lan Zhan!  I’m sorry, I left you behind, didn’t I.  Never mind.”

“No, I—” said Lan Wangji, but he still felt a half li behind Wei Ying and when Wei Ying abandoned his story-telling attempt in favor of other activities, Lan Wangji let himself be distracted.

---

Wei Ying assured Lan Wangji that he was hardly disappointed by any aspect of Lan Wangji’s performance, but still Lan Wangji wanted to— He wanted to join Wei Ying in this, give Wei Ying this.  

Wei Ying lit the lamps in the Jingshi while Lan Wangji undressed, since Lan Wangji insisted on laying out everything carefully so it would be where it was supposed to be in the morning.

“What if you were the chieftain of a barbarian tribe, and you had captured me?” said Wei Ying, putting aside the light and coming to the bed.

Lan Wangji could not imagine himself in this role, could not imagine himself separate from the strictures of Gusu Lan, but he knew by now that Wei Ying did not require this of him.  “How did I come to be their chief?” he asked, anyway.

“They found you as a baby,” said Wei Ying promptly, “by the side of the river.  No, in the grass.  And you were so cute! You and Zewu-jun together,” he added, perhaps (rightly) thinking that this would be Lan Wangji’s next concern, although he would have let it go rather than disrupt whatever story Wei Ying was telling.  “The two of you, chubby-cheeked and adorable, so obviously they had to keep you and raise you up to be barbarian warriors.”

“Ah,” said Lan Wangji.  “And I have taken you captive.”

“Yes,” said Wei Ying, kneeling by the side of the bed and clasping his hands to show that his wrists were bound.  Lan Wangji sat on the bed, parting his legs where Wei Ying knelt, and took Wei Ying’s wrists in his hands.  Wei Ying shivered, a little.

“Or, your warriors did.  Swooped me up and carried me off, bound up over the horse’s saddle.  And then.  Threw me at your feet.”

Lan Wangji did not know what a barbarian’s horse looks like, or that horse’s saddle, nor the barbarian encampment, where, presumably, this delivery was being made.  But he had a good vision of what Wei Ying looks like, tied at his feet.  “You are at my mercy,” he said, and squeezed Wei Ying’s wrists.  “You do not know what I have planned for you.  Am I gentle with you, or rough?”

“Please don’t be rough,” said Wei Ying, a little tremulously, which was a clear enough answer.

---

Lan Wangji enjoyed paying for Wei Ying’s purchases, and Wei Ying was well aware of this.  Certainly it would have been simpler to provide Wei Ying with coin, when they were in Caiyi, to give Wei Ying his own store of coin, rather than wait for Wei Ying to search for Lan Wangji’s gaze over the longan vendor’s stall and then drop his gaze coyly.

Later, returning to Cloud Recesses, Lan Wangji saw Wei Ying playing with the cord of the yaopei he had bought for him nearly a year ago.  Perhaps that was unrelated.

Some business kept them apart the rest of that evening—or, he had seen Wei Ying in passing, but only in public—but Wei Ying seemed to be thinking on some matter.  When he returned to the Jingshi he found Wei Ying sitting, waiting for him next to the desk, with a sheet of paper out.

“Da-ren, I have been tallying my debts to you and this unfortunate one has come to beg your forbearance.”

Lan Wangji glanced at the paper where Wei Ying had gestured at his debts.  It was blank, which made sense, as Wei Ying had a dislike of wasting paper that he denied when anyone asked about it.

“Have I not already been generous?” asked Lan Wangji.  This one came easily to him.

Wei Ying bowed his head.  “Da-ren has been very generous.  Please, this one’s parents have been sick and business has not been good recently.  I am their only daughter—or” he looked up briefly to check Lan Wanji, “Son, that is, and I must tend to them.”

Somehow, this was the simplest thing.  “What does Wei-guniang suggest, then?”  Lan Wangji felt fire crackling up his spine at the way Wei Ying’s posture became even softer, settled.  He held himself motionless, a pillar, a mountain, a sword.

Wei Ying cowered.  “Is there nothing da-ren would desire of me?”

Lan Wangji extended his hand, gripped Wei Ying’s chin and pulled, so that Wei Ying’s face was turned to him although he struggled to look away.  “Wei-guniang should not offer herself to my desires when she knows nothing of them.”

Wei Ying trembled.

---

Lan Wangji thought these sort of imaginings were the sole province of Wei Ying until, one evening when they were trapped inside a tent at the side of the road, halfway between Gusu and Lanling.  Outside, the rain poured down, but under the tent they were still warm and dry.  They were half atop each other to avoid touching the edges of the tent and getting wet, but it was hardly a hardship.

Wei Ying rested the point of his chin on Lan Wangji’s breastbone to be contrary.  “Lan Zhan,” he said, voice mixing with the rattling of the rain on the tent, “did you ever think, when we were young—”

And then he stopped, as if that were the entire thought, or perhaps he was unsure how to complete the question, faced with all the things they lived now which would have been unthinkable when they were young.

Lan Wangji traced a hand up and down Wei Ying’s back.  “Mn,” he said, because somehow, in this moment, in this quiet space with Wei Ying, it was easy to cast his mind back to that other life, that other self, with his certainties and his innocence.

“Oh?” asked Wei Ying.

“I—” started Lan Wangji, and then took a moment to get his thoughts in order.  “I imagined—I was very ashamed, you understand, but I sometimes thought.  I had seen a certain print that depicted a man pleasuring himself on his partner’s thigh.”  (Wei Ying gasped, and wiggled with joy.) “And I thought, Wei Ying is shameless, what if he tells me he will give me this in exchange for allowing him to escape his punishment?”

Wei Ying heaved, realized he would get wet if he moved at all, and settled back down, but with his mouth at Lan Wangji’s throat now.  “Lan Zhan!” he said, delighted.  “Please tell me everything!”

Lan Wangji could feel himself blushing.  He wasn’t ashamed, and now, nothing about the scenario seemed embarrassing, but somehow the feelings of himself from so long ago overlaid his feelings now.  He remembered the agony of being unable to tear himself from this fantasy, the horror he had felt, although he now felt only affection for that young, confused Lan Wangji.  “Obviously, I knew what the correct response would be,” he told Wei Ying.

“Obviously,” said Wei Ying, warmly.  “I suppose the proper thing to do would be to tell your uncle immediately.”

“I did not— dwell on that,” admitted Lan Wangji.  “I tried to imagine that I would say no, very firmly, and then you would become more shameless, and—”  He didn’t know why he was explaining himself this way to Wei Ying, who was certainly an expert in how these thoughts went, “sometimes your robes would slip down and I would see your shoulder.  But also I imagined that I would say yes.  Or not say yes, but you would somehow slip past my—”  Here he could not quite fill the gap.  “I’m not certain.  I would say no, but somehow, it would happen anyway.”  

Lan Wangji slid his hand down past Wei Ying’s back and settled it on his ass, which he gave a firm squeeze.  He didn’t want to excite either of them too much or they would both certainly get extremely wet, but somehow rediscovering this idea he had forgotten was both heating his blood and making him feel a melancholy nostalgia.  “I don’t think I had a very good idea of how it would work.  The print was not very clear.  But I would try to… calm myself.  I would go to the cold springs, or meditate.  I had many spring dreams,” he admitted, “I worried that I was harming my cultivation.”

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” said Wei Ying, and kissed his cheekbone, his nose, his mouth.  “I was having certain dreams myself at that time, but they were not.  Quite so straightforward.  I hardly remember any, now.”

“Mm,” said Lan Wangji, because this was extremely relevant.

“I think I remember… a dream of you chasing me through Cloud Recesses?  I was hiding, and scared, and I didn’t know what would happen when you found me, but—  Well, in retrospect, perhaps it’s very obvious.”

“Mn,” said Lan Wangji, remembering those days, remembering being boys who didn’t know what the future held, and barely understood their desires.  He hesitated.  Drew in a breath and let it go.

“Wei Wuxian is an unruly disciple.  Copying Conduct will be instructive.”

“Lan Zhan!”

“Improper,” scolded Lan Wangji, and pinched where his hand rested.

“Hanguang-jun,” crooned Wei Ying, in a tone that would certainly have alarmed and unsettled him in his youth.  “But the weather outside is so good, and we’re stuck inside in this library.”  Thunder rolled to underscore the shamelessness of this lie.

“Think on how your behavior may be amended as you copy,” said Lan Wangji, and pinched as low as he could reach.  Wei Ying squirmed.

“Lan er-gege!” said Wei Ying. “But my fingers are sore!  Have pity”  He began working his hips to try to help Lan Wangji get his trousers down below the crease of his ass.  Lan Wangji was somewhat frustrated by his inability to get them much lower.  He found himself fixated on achieving Wei Ying’s inner thigh, and got his shoulder soaked against the inner surface of the tent curling around Wei Ying to shove the trousers down to the crease of his knees.

Presently, the tent gave up entirely and they were forced to seek shelter under the same tarp as Apple.